The Ethernet protocol is rapidly growing as a communications protocol between different service providers. The T1 standard is reliable because there is a known bit rate and if there are deviations, performance problems are easily verified using the end points and loop around functions, the T1 protocol may also use an alarm indicator signal or state that may be passed to every circuit path segment from end to end to indicate far end and near end fault detection. Because Ethernet protocol is non-synchronous, determining or communicating performance statistics and alarms for each segment of a connection or specific devices may be difficult.